The Swiss government has set work permit quotas for non-EU/EFTA nationals, UK nationals and EU nationals on assignment. Furthermore, as of January 2025, Croatian Nationals will not longer be subject to Swiss quotas.

Overview

Swiss employers shall continue to employ qualified professionals from abroad to further promote the Swiss economy and to counteract the prevalent lack of skilled workers. To regulate the number of foreign employees coming to Switzerland, the Swiss immigration regulation is based on a quota system and a precedence of employees from the Swiss and EU/EFTA employment market.

As in recent years, the available quotas for Non-EU/EFTA nationals and EU-nationals on assignment have not been exhausted. This is why the Swiss Federal decided to release the same number of available quotas for 2025 as in the previous years. Although UK nationals will continue to have separate quotas for 2025, the middle-term plan will be to integrate these in the regular quotas for Non-EU/EFTA nationals. Please find the official announcement of the Swiss Federal Council here.

Work Permit Quotas 2025

• Quotas for Non-EU Nationals:

For the year 2025, the Swiss Federal Council approved again 8,500 quotas for specialists from Non-EU countries:

4,500 long-term B permits and 4,000 short-term L permits.

• Quotas for EU/ EFTA Nationals on Assignment:

Similar to 2024, the Swiss Federal Council approved again 3,500 quotas for assignees from EU/ EFTA countries for the year 2024:

3,000 L permits and 500 B permits.

• Quotas for UK Nationals:

Since 2021 the Agreement on Free Movement of Persons (AFMP) is no longer applicable to UK nationals. From a Swiss immigration perspective, UK nationals also fall under the category of third-country nationals, with the difference that they receive separate quotas. The separate quotes were introduced as a transitional solution.

The Federal Council has announced its medium-term plan to integrate the UK quotas into the regular quotas for Non-EU/EFTA nationals. The reason for this is that the quotas for UK nationals have been exhausted moderately. By the end of October 2024 only up to 18% of the available L and B quotas for UK nationals had been exhausted. 

Therefore, for 2025 the Swiss Federal Council released again 3,500 quotas for specialists from the UK:

2’100 long-term B permits and 1’400 short-term L permits.

• Quotas for Croatian Nationals:

For the years 2023 and 2024 the Swiss Federal Council activated the safeguard clause to re-introduce Swiss quotas for Croatian nationals due the high demand of permits for Croatian nationals after introducing full freedom of movement for Croatian nationals in 2022.

Since the safeguard clause can only be applied two years consecutively, Croatian nationals will benefit from full freedom of movement again as of 1 January 2025.  The transitional agreement for Croatian nationals runs over a period of 10 years, which will end 31 December 2026. This means that Switzerland can revoke the safeguard clause and re-introduce quotas again for the year 2026 in case the number of Croatian employees exceeds a certain threshold in 2025.

• The extension of the protection status S

In September this year, the Federal Council also decided to extend the protection status for Ukrainian refugees until 4 March 2026 unless the current situation changes fundamentally in the meantime. In 2023, the Council had also defined a target for labour market integration of S permit holders, which is set at 40% of persons capable of employment with protection status S working in Switzerland by the end of 2024. To support this target, the Federal contributions shall continue to support integration efforts of the cantons, in particular to improve language skills and facilitate access to the labour market and education.

The extension of the protection status provides clarity not only for the 66,000 Ukrainians (as of August 2024) with the protection status, but also for companies who have employed Ukrainian nationals on S permits in the past. 

The statistics show at the end of October 2024, about 63% of the available quotas for Non-EU/EFTA nationals have been exhausted. B permits are as usually more in demand.

Only around 40% of the quotas for EU/EFTA assignments have been exhausted.

The UK permits were exhausted slightly less than in the previous year: 16% of L permits and 20% of B permits were used.

Finally, the quotas for Croatian nationals are, as expected, in high demand. At the end of October, all available B permits and about 94% of the L permits were exhausted.

Conclusion and recommendations

The fact that the quotas have not been completely exhausted in recent years is primarily due to the pandemic. Based on this, the Federal Council has decided to retain the same quotas for 2025. For Swiss employers this means that the availability for quotas will in general not pose a challenge in the application process, just as in the last years.

The planned integration of the UK quotas into the regular Non-EU/EFTA quotas is an anticipated update and it is expected that this development will have no significant impact on the availability of quotas and for Swiss employers hiring UK nationals.

There is good news for Swiss employers seeking to hire Croatian nationals in 2025 as they will no longer have to secure a work permit approval ahead of the start date. The number of Croatians entering Switzerland in 2025 will define whether quotas will be re-introduced in 2026.

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